This serv'd her white neck for a purple sphere, And cast itself at full breadth down her back: There, since the first breath that begun the wrack Of her free quiet from Leander's lips, She wrought a sea, in one flame, full of ships; But that one ship where all her wealth did pass, 50 Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was; For in that sea she naked figured him; Her diving needle taught him how to swim, And to each thread did such resemblance give, For joy to be so like him it did live: Things senseless live by art, and rational die By rude contempt of art and industry. Scarce could she work, but, in her strength of thought, She fear'd she prick'd Leander as she wrought,[71] And oft would shriek so, that her guardian, frighted, 60 Would startling haste, as with some mischief cited: They double life that dead things' griefs sustain; They kill that feel not their friends' living pain. Sometimes she fear'd he sought her infamy; And then, as she was working of his eye, She thought to prick it out to quench her ill; But, as she prick'd, it grew more perfect still: Trifling attempts no serious acts advance; The fire of love is blown by dalliance. In working his fair neck she did so grace it, 70 She still was working her own arms t' embrace it: That, and his shoulders, and his hands were seen Above the stream; and with a pure sea-green She did so quaintly shadow every limb, All might be seen beneath the waves to swim. In this conceited scarf she wrought beside A moon in change, and shooting stars did glide In number after her with bloody beams; Which figur'd her affects[72] in their extremes, Pursuing nature in her Cynthian body, 80 And did her thoughts running on change imply; For maids take more delight, when they prepare, And think of wives' states, than when wives they are. Beneath all these she wrought a fisherman,[73] Drawing his nets from forth the ocean; Who drew so hard, ye might discover well The toughen'd sinews in his neck did swell: His inward strains drave out his blood-shot eyes, And springs of sweat did in his forehead rise; Yet was of naught but of a serpent sped, 90 That in his bosom flew and stung him dead: And this by Fate into her mind was sent, Not wrought by mere instinct of her intent. At the scarf's other end her hand did frame, Near the fork'd point of the divided flame, A country virgin keeping of a vine, Who did of hollow bulrushes combine Snares for the stubble-loving grasshopper, And by her lay her scrip that nourish'd her. Within a myrtle shade she sate and sung; 100 And tufts of waving reeds above her sprung, Where lurked two foxes, that, while she applied